NAFTA/WTO: Reform it or pull out?

[rucky]

Regardless of what your candidate says, what do you believe?

[AP]

1. Third way: enter into FAIR trade agreements with South America and

Pacific Rim which encourage massive GOOD trade with those regions, which build up wealthy middle classes in SA, US, Phillipines, etc, and which starve trade that takes place under the crappy treaties. Force NAFTA to have to reform itself or die. After it's reformed, Mexico and Canada can share in the bounty that US, Venezueala, Brazil, Argentina, Equador, Phillipines, etc, will have been experiencing.

I get the impression this is what Edwards is gearing up for.

[rucky]

2. That position is valid.

If you're truly interested in reform, you have to be prepared to pull out if necessary. Otherwise you're going to the table with nothing but a plea.

[AP]

3. This is my prediction if a President Kucinich pulled out of NAFTA:

The banks engage in subterfuge to tank the economy. Kucinich is falsely blamed for causing the depression by pulling out of Nafta. NAFTA is legitimized for the next 75 years. Kucinich becomes's the Democratic Hoover. Jeb Bush becomes the Republican FDR by merely bringing us back to the crappiness of 2004.

Only cleverness will fix Nafta.

[rucky]

4. The banks wouldn't do that if there were no guarantee of a bailout.

And there would be no such guarantee under a president Kucinich.

Kinda like Mayor Kucinich's move toward Cleveland PUC. He was a pariah for awhile, until the surplus was recognized.

[AP]

8. The guarantee is that Republicans would get elected with a pro-NAFTA

mandate.

[rucky]

10. Let's play out the Edwards scenario...

what's to prevent the banks from making the same threat to a reformer? Dollars to donuts they've already made that threat - which is how we got the WTO we know & love today. How do you think labor & environmental safeguards were negotiated out the first time around?

And now that the corporatists have such a good deal, why would they budge from their entrenched position? So Edwards comes in 10 years later & rehashes the old debate. What's changed, besides rising profits from the existing deal? Will Edwards have the nerve to make good on his pullout threats?

Go through the motions, but it comes down to two options - each with a heavy price.

Maybe DK is taking a hardline position so they can come to HIM to negotiate? Maybe he's the one playing chess, here.

[AP]

11. The key is to create an alternative paradigm which is MORE productive.

The problem with NAFTA is that it shifts wealth from labor to capital. Even Henry Ford knew that when labor is wealthy, he'd be wealthier. So you set up an alternative paradigm -- fair trade -- and lead by example.

[rucky]

12. You mean like this?

http://www.kucinich.us/pressreleases/pr_111103a.php

"NAFTA has helped us achieve a trade deficit of over $400 billion. We've lost nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs since July 2000. Modifying NAFTA is illegal under the WTO. We can talk all we want about modifying NAFTA to protect human rights and workers' rights, but the end result will be a ruling from the WTO like the recent one on steel telling us that we are not free, that global corporate trade agreements have the final say. We need a new start. We must begin from scratch with decent trade agreements between this country and each other country we trade with, agreements that are based from the start on the needs of people and communities."



- That's quite a racket they've created for themselves, eh? They made another self-licking ice cream cone.

[AP]

13. Pulling out of NAFT would be great, but it would put a big target on the..

...backs of democrats.

Entering into FUNCTIONING PRODUCTIVE trade agreements with SA and the Pacific Rim can shift a lot of trade out from the NAFTA paradigm and create something democrats can hold up as an ideal, without giving Republicans a target on their backs to shoot at.

it's just smart politics.

I would establish the good trade agreements FIRST and then pull out of NAFTA. But I bet NAFTA would beg for reform first, once the example has been set.

[krkaufman]

5. That's pretty much what the banks did to him as Mayor of Cleveland

Reading from Mother Jones, the banks withdrew Cleveland's credit when Kucinich wouldn't agree to selling off the public-owned municipal power company.

He was crucified and out of politics for years... until people started realizing the massive cash saved by having retained ownership of the power company. He then was praised and welcomed again, elected to state Senate and then the US House.

[krkaufman]

6. Reform as FAIR trade, nuke it if not possible. n/t

[corporatewhore]

7. its not just us leftys who want to nuke it so does the texas gop

[Alinsky]

9. What is Nafta / WTO?

I am not a member of a union, and I read some things about it, but like all modern lawyer speak , when I read some of its language I still have no idea what it is.

And when I read the stuff on the so called left about it, I was wondering if I was at some Klan meeting in 1950s Alabama.

Hell its not like we have like in the 50s to 70s a huge Union industry , like at that time. From what I read about the politics of the modern union they (the union leadership) are all sellouts that have adopted the tactics of the very corporations they say they are trying to regulate on the National and International level.

So how is it that a Union that is perhaps corrupt, has no non-violent principles, is going to train or regulate the international workplace? Whom by the way most of the International workforce are dirt poor the exact opposite of the American Unions at least in the 1950s to the 1970s that were upper middle class, and in no way would let the poor get union cards for the good jobs and that were also were pro war patriotic during times of war and that would ridicule anti war protestors. Why did that all the sudden change? Did NAFTA and WTO all the sudden naturally make the unions more liberal? And Anti war? How can that be so when most of the modem day Unions are Republicans and Bush voters? Think about it.

It seems to me if American anti NAFTA and WTO protestors want to really help the overseas workforce they should go to their countries and help them with protesting.

I know as a former protestor if all the Black blockers moved to Latin America, I might just start to dissent the Military-Industrial -Complex again.